


Fish Bait

by aroseandapen



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: M/M, hoping for a happy ending, mermaid au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-02
Updated: 2018-12-30
Packaged: 2019-06-20 08:50:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15530634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aroseandapen/pseuds/aroseandapen
Summary: By chance, Kaito happens to come across a merman on his morning run. He still doesn't know if he's lucky for it or not.





	1. Chance Encounter

**Author's Note:**

> I've written a couple of drabbles involving this AU already, and decided to try and make it into a full-fledged multi-chapter fic.
> 
> My tumblr is aroseandapen, and I post more drabbles there than I remember to cross-post over here.

The early morning chill crept up over his arms and raised goosebumps in its wake. Kaito jogged in place to keep himself warm as he ran through a mental checklist to make sure he had everything. Phone? Check. Keys? Check. Water bottle, despite the chilly air blowing in from the ocean? Check.   
  
Shirt and shorts covering his body? Check. Not that he’d ever forgotten them, but the amount of nightmares around the subject kept him vigilant against it. Some things didn’t need a first-time experience.   
  
With that, however, he was all set for his morning run. He blew on his hands to warm them up, then set off at a brisk pace down the his grandparents’ driveway and up the street. As he reached the end, he turned left around the corner and the view before him opened up to the beach, his usual destination. He enjoyed jogging along the coastline, kicking up sand with his heels and attempting to outrun the early lingering nighttime chill that hadn’t yet been chased away by the morning sun.  The cold air filled his lungs and invigorated him, the exhaustion of waking up so early falling away so that he felt energized and ready for the coming day.   
  
He enjoyed the stillness of the coast at this time, when tourists hadn’t yet risen and very few people wandered the beach. The near silence save for the natural sounds of wind and waves brought peace to his heart as he run his usual route, down the long strip of sand at the water’s edge and past the pier. As he made to pass it by, however, movement caught his eye. He slowed to a stop, jogging in place to glance down toward the end of the pier.   
  
Two fishermen stood at the very edge, not unusual in and of itself. He’d seen plenty of them both early in the morning and late at night, getting some fishing done before the sun rose too high or the beach-goers swarmed the pier and sand. Yet he could make out a large netted mass through the fog that hadn’t yet dissipated for the day, wriggling on the pier floor between them. He’d never seen such a huge fish before, at least in person although he knew theoretically that they could get pretty damn big depending on the species. He’d always figured that was something seen only in deep-sea fishing, not something a person could catch at a pier close to land. Curiosity burned inside of his chest; he had to investigate, and probably congratulate the two men on their catch. He started down the pier, his interest growing with each step.   
  
As he drew within earshot, he opened his mouth to call out his questions and announce his arrival before he actually got to them. Yet as he did so, he got a better look at their catch, and it stopped him in his tracks, one foot still hovering in the air. His breath caught in his throat in disbelief. ‘What the hell’, he wanted to say, but he couldn’t form words. He opened his mouth, and no sound came out except for a quiet exhale.   
  
“I eat people like you for breakfast, ya know! So you better not touch me if you know what’s good for you!” Upon drawing close enough to make out the details, Kaito saw that although it had a fish-like tail, the scales crept up over the skin of a strikingly human-shaped torso. It turned swiveled its head between the two men as it spoke, a wicked grin fixed onto its face. “I may look cute, but you know creatures like me are super strong and I could murder you without breaking a sweat.”   
  
“It talks way too much; no one’s going to want a yapper. There’s probably a way to cut its vocal cords without killing it, and I know a guy who can do that,” one of the fisherman said, ignoring the half-fish person.   
  
“No way. If the buyer wants it quiet, they can do it themselves. I don’t want to have to barter with someone over ‘damaged goods’. Put a gag on it. That’ll work well enough,” the other said, shaking his head with hands resting on his hips.   
  
“Holy shit,” Kaito breathed out. Neither of the men had noticed him yet, and he was glad for it.   
  
He couldn’t believe the shit the fisherman talked about. Even if the thing looked like something of myths or legends, the sort that lurked in the oceans and dragged sailors down to their watery deaths, the fishermen sounded downright insane talking about it. Although obviously intelligent enough to make speech, it might as well be mute for all the good it did. The fishermen didn’t acknowledge anything it said, casually talking about maiming and selling it as if discussing everyday business. Kaito vaguely wondered if they’d done this before. Found a creature like this… mermaid? It had to be a mermaid, but Kaito could hardly wrap his mind around the impossible idea of it.   
  
Yes, impossible, such a thing couldn’t be real. Yet despite that, one lay right before him at the end of the pier.   
  
“Geez, I’m not an ‘it’ you know, I’m a ‘he’,” the mermaid—mer _ man _ ?—said. He spoke with a childish tone, as if the fishermen were nothing more than an annoyance to him, but Kaito could detect a hint of fear in the waver of his voice. “I should kill you guys just for that. My friends will be here any moment you know and they’ll drag both of you down and murder you if you don’t let me go.”   
  
The fishermen laughed at that. For the first time they addressed the merman himself, both wearing matching expressions of cruel amusement. One said, “We both know you creatures go solo. You’ll kill us if you get a chance, sure, but…” The speaker nudged him with the tip of his boot, withdrawing his leg the moment the merman took a swipe at it. “We’re not going to give you that.”   
  
Kaito couldn’t just stand there watching this happen, but he also couldn’t just turn and continue his way down the beach. Real or not, human or weird fish person, he refused to let someone get tormented and sold and their vocal cords potentially ripped out. Not when he had the opportunity to save them, a chance encounter that had brought him across these two fishermen and a captured merman.   
  
Did mermen truly kill humans like the fishermen claimed? Hell, did that even really matter? Kaito knew that the truth wouldn’t stop him from doing the right thing according to his gut.

So he made his decision. His very stupid, dumbass decision.   
  
Feet thudding against the pier, Kaito bulled forward toward the figures. The sound of shoes thudding against the wood startled the fishermen. They spun in his direction, mouths parted as if to shout something at the intruder on their business, but too late. Bending down, his hands collided with the cold, smooth scales the merman’s tail and the rough-spun net entangling him. He shoved, hard. Something stung his hands as they slipped over the tail, making him hiss, but he didn’t have time to think about it.   
  
The merman let out a sharp cry of alarm as he tipped and tumbled over the lip of the pier. Kaito grinned at the splash he made when he hit the water. Mission accomplished.   
  
“Hey!”   
  
“What the hell, kid, what’s your problem!”   
  
Oops, no time to celebrate yet. He still had to move. Kaito jogged back a few steps, putting distance between the fishermen and preparing to make his quick escape. He offered an insincere grin of apology in response to their faces, equal parts shocked and enraged. “Sorry, just wanted to see what was going on, guess my hand slipped!” He laughed and spun on his heel. He hoped that the net somehow came loose when he pushed the merman, but he had no way to check and make sure now. “Sorry about that, but I gotta go, I’m running late!”   
  
Propelled by the adrenaline coursing through him, he took off at a sprint back down the pier. The men shouted after him, but he didn’t look over his shoulder to see if they pursued him. He kept his eyes straight ahead and ran and  _ ran _ , assuming that they were after him. He kept running until their voices were nothing but faint whispers swallowed up by the wind, until the sand beneath his feet turned into hard concrete. Even then, he refused to slow down.   
  
By the time he returned to his grandparents’ house, he was gasping for air. His heart pounded harder than it ever had before, his limbs trembling with the excitement over what just happened. He stopped at the end of the driveway to catch his breath. Only then did he investigate his stinging palms. He winced.   
  
Apparently, despite their smoothness when he’d first touched them, the merman’s scales were sharp as well. Both of his hands sported several cuts, the blood crusted over his palms from his mad dash from pier to house. They probably weren’t as bad as they looked for all the blood present, but he should probably get them cleaned up before his grandparents saw and made a big deal over it. He just needed to avoid letting his grandma see them. She normally rose shortly after Kaito left for his morning run. She liked to brew a pot of tea and sit at the rear-facing window to greet the morning sun with a steaming mug in her hands.   
  
Normally he welcomed the sight. Something about seeing her, a blanket placed over her lap and the worn fluffy slippers on her feet that Kaito had gotten her for Christmas years ago, helped him wind down after a hard run. Right now, however, he didn’t want to have to try and make up an excuse for the cuts. Maybe he could say that he had fallen.   
  
But looking at the cuts, they didn’t look like the sort of scrapes that someone would get in a fall. Maybe his grandma wouldn’t look too closely at them. It’d be best for her not to see them at all, he decided before slipping into the house.   
  
He closed the door softly behind him and made a beeline for the bathroom. As he passed by the living room, he caught sight of those familiar fuzzy slippers and he sped up, disappearing into the hall.   
  
Just as he did so, he heard his grandma’s amused voice call out after him, “Kaito? Where’s the fire?”   
  
His heart thudded in his chest. Backing up a few steps, he poked his head just far out enough into the entryway so that he could grin into the living room at his grandma and keep his hands out of sight. “Hey! Just gotta… piss real bad is all. I don’t think I’ve run so fast in my life I needed to get home so bad,” he lied through his teeth. The accompanying laugh he gave sounded strained, but he hoped that could be explained by a desperate need to use the toilet.   
  
His grandma shook her head. “No wonder you got home so quickly. You’re usually out until later,” she said, voice gently exasperated, yet a tiny smile formed on her lips. “Well, don’t let me keep you then, but I’d welcome your company out here if you’ve got some time to sit with an old woman after you finish your business.”   
  
“Yeah of course! I’ll be out in just a sec!” he said, and ducked back down the hall.   
  
Once the bathroom door locked behind him, he let out a sigh of relief. Now then. He turned on the bathroom sink, and ignored the pain when he stuck his hands under the running water. As he washed the blood away, he examined the cuts lining his palms. Not bad, but he hadn’t expected to get injured at all just from pushing some half-fish-mermaid creature into the water. At least he’d gotten away, and the mermaid had too. Probably. The netting might not unravel, and would leave him just as trapped as he’d been on the docks. At least he’d be in the ocean, though. Maybe some friends of his would come by and help him out.   
  
Then Kaito remembered what one of those men had said. Mermaids were supposedly solitary creatures, according to them. In that case, he’d be on his own and no one would come to help him. Did Kaito just make things a whole lot worse? Did he knock him into the water and solidify his fate to starve to death without a way to swim free?   
  
Not that he could do anything to help now. He just had to accept that he’d done all that he could and move on. Ignoring the guilt that still churned his insides, Kaito patted his hands dry and put some ointment on the cuts. A few adhesive bandages would work fine, he figured, and after that he’d be able to say that he fell and scraped his hands trying to catch himself with no problem. No one would question him if they couldn’t see the cuts themselves. Accidents happened.   
  
Remembering the excuse he’d given his grandma, Kaito flushed the toilet. He let the water run and splashed it on his sweaty face. Once his reflection looked presentable enough, he shut off the sink and nodded to himself. Alright. All he had to do was not look like he was distracted with thinking about something fantastical that he’d witnessed on his run, and not worry his grandma about things that she didn’t have to. It was just any other day, any other morning spent chatting the hour before he had to get running to school away with her. He didn’t mess with some fishermen’s catch of a creature straight from a fairy tale.   
  
Right, he had this.   
  
…easier said than done.

He left the bathroom and, as promised, joined his grandma in the living room. As he spent time with her, she didn’t question him much nor did she seem to notice the bandages on his hands. At one point, she did remark that he seemed more distracted than usual, but Kaito lied and claimed that he hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before. It was a believable enough excuse, and she nodded in understanding and warned him not to stay up too late, to which he assured her that he wouldn’t. After having some tea, he got up again to get ready and head off to school. The trip there felt more like a dream, and he had no memory of the commute. Once in class, school droned on as he sat feeling trapped at his desk. He needed to get up and run or do something to exert some of the restless energy building up inside of it, but there was nothing to do for it but wait until the next break.   
  
The boredom set in quickly, and the teacher’s words became a background track as his thoughts once again turned to his fantastical morning encounter.   
  
Kaito had seen a mermaid. A real live mermaid, caught by fishermen and about to be dragged away and sold. Probably on a secret market he guessed, considering he’d never heard of such a thing and those men seemed to know what they were doing. Solo creatures likely, potential killers, something he should probably be grateful that he hadn’t met on his own in the middle of the ocean. Yet he couldn’t help but feel the bitter disappointment that he hadn’t been able to speak to it—to him, rather. It wasn’t every day that a highschool student saw a mermaid.   
  
Yet he knew that there hadn’t been time for words. He’d had to act quickly, and either shove it into the water or scoop him up to run away from the pier with a sizable fish-tail-person combo floundering in his arms. With how the latter would slow him down and his palms still stung from the cuts he’d wrapped up that morning, the former seemed to be the wiser option. He didn’t even know whether the fishermen had chased him at all, but if he’d grabbed their catch then they surely would’ve pursued him in order to get it back.   
  
He sighed, and tried to return his attention to class. The teacher was talking about some math problem written on the board, and a single glance told him that the lesson was a waste of his time. He’d learned about it on his own months ago. So knowing that he wasn’t missing anything important, Kaito allowed himself to zone out again, eyes absently traveling between the board ahead of him and the notebook pretending to take notes in.   
  
He couldn’t stop thinking about that mermaid, and his ‘notes’ were a testament to that, filled with absent-minded doodles of mermaids filling the page. If only he had someone that he could talk to about it, just to get it out in the open. Maybe then he wouldn’t get so distracted as he’d been all day so far. Yet even if he did decide to confide in someone, there was no way that they’d ever believe him.   
  
What was his name? Did mermaids even have names?   
  
Classes continued to flit by, and Kaito didn’t remember any of it. By the time school began to reach its end, his doodles filled the pages of his notebook, and he still continued staring out into the space in front of him. He didn’t even register that the class had long since emptied out, leaving him alone to his relentless thoughts.

“ _Earth to Kaito Momota_.”  
  
The voice spoken right at his ear made him jump in his seat so hard that he banged his knees against the underside of his desk. He grunted, hunching over to rub at his knees as he shot an offended look at the person who’d startled him from his thoughts.  
  
His expression softened immediately.  
  
“Maki Roll, hey! What’s up?”  
  
The only response he received initially was a sigh as the dark-haired girl straightened up from where she’d had her hands planted on his desk. She fixed him with a cold glare, as if he’d somehow inconvenienced her. He didn’t need to guess why she seemed annoyed; she’d likely tell him the exact reason in mere moments.  
  
“What do you mean, ‘what’s up’? Are you planning on going home anytime soon, or are you just going to sit here staring at the board all night? You know I’m not going to wait for you if you decide to space out forever,” she scolded him, just as Kaito predicted she would.  
  
Kaito glanced up at the clock. Shit, he couldn’t believe the school day had already ended. He didn’t even remember lunch. Did he have homework to do that night? The board had already been wiped clean; he’d have to call up a couple classmates later just to make sure. He laughed at himself, turning his sheepish grin back up at the glowering girl.  
  
“Sorry, didn’t realize what time it was! Didn’t even hear the bell, I guess, maybe I should get my ears checked,” he said, sticking his little finger into his ear to dig around as if to clear some blockage away. “Didn’t mean to make you wait Maki Roll, thanks for coming to get me.”  
  
Maki puffed out her cheeks, averting her gaze and playing with one of her extremely long ponytails. Kaito remembered more the one occasion where he’d told her how pretty her hair was. She’d called him an idiot for it each time, but he always caught the hint of a pleased smile afterward. It pleased him to see her secret smiles, although he never called her out on the lie. If he did, she’d deny it vehemently, and he’d be hard pressed to get a positive reaction again after that. He refrained from calling her cute now, though, with how irritated she looked.  
  
“Like I said, I don’t wait for you,” she said, refusing to look at him. “I just happened to come by here anyway, so I don’t know what you’re thanking me for. Stop smiling at me like that!”  
  
Kaito’s smile turned into a beaming grin as she insisted that she hadn’t been waiting around for him. He couldn’t help it. It was a poor lie at best, with Maki covering up for her actual concern for him. When she chanced a glance at his face and snapped upon seeing the smile stretched across his face, he could only laugh. Shaking his head, his grin fixed onto his lips.  
  
“Sorry, sorry,” he said, not sounding apologetic in the slightest. He stood from his desk, grabbing his backpack from the floor to sling it over his back with one strap hanging off his shoulder. “Thanks for snapping me out of it anyway. Now, let’s get going!”  
  
“You’re such a dumbass.” She seemed mildly amused as she said it, however, and the insult lacked its usual frosty bite.  
  
They fell into a comfortable silence as they left the school. Such quiet suited Kaito just fine. He knew that Maki preferred to listen more than talk, and Kaito normally enjoyed filling the spaces between her sparse responses and rolled eyes with his own words. He talked about anything that came to mind—the day, his classes, tennis club—but inevitably the conversation rolled into his love for space. Kaito could talk endlessly about the universe, and stars, and planets, and his dream of one day blazing a trail across them all. One day he’d pioneer the way for commercial space travel, so that artists of all kinds could reach alien cultures that they hadn’t even discovered yet.  
  
He half Maki to tell him to shut up with how frequently he talked about space sometimes. It was practically all he was interested in, and so he talked about it in great length, for as long as she allowed it. She never said anything about it though, and listened to him speak with sideways glances that told him he still had her attention.  
  
Today, however, he didn’t say anything. As Maki fell quiet and they began their walk home together, Kaito was content to allow the silence to remain. His encounter with that merman still buzzed around his head, his thoughts allowing for nothing else to enter them. So many regrets. Should he have gotten a picture? No, he’d been too busy shoving the merman into the water and then running away from the angry fishermen. A picture from afar would’ve been too fuzzy and look fake, and a picture close up was just impossible.  
  
Shit, Kaito hoped that he’d never see the fishermen again. He doubted it, but the possibility was still there. It’d probably be smart to delay his early-morning run or take it in the evening, just to ensure that their schedules never crossed for the next few weeks or so.  
  
Not that he was afraid of them. No way, he could take those wimps with one had tied behind his back. He just preferred not to bother with it to begin with. Explaining bruised knuckles and a bloody lip was more trouble than simply changing up his schedule for a short while.  
  
“You sure are quiet,” Maki remarked after they’d been walking for a few minutes.  
  
“Huh, am I?” Kaito shrugged off her comment. “Guess I’ve just got a lot on my mind.”  
  
“Like what?”  
  
Of course Maki would choose now of all times to ask him questions. In her defense, Kaito supposed that he’d been acting strange since he first came into school, zoning out through lunch and spacing out so hard in class that she’d had to come find him after it was over. Now he didn’t talk as he usually did on his way home. Anyone would be curious about what had his mind so occupied.  
  
But he couldn’t exactly tell her what happened, right? She wouldn’t believe him. Kaito wouldn’t believe him either, listening to him tell his tale. Yet she was his friend, and he should be able to be honest with her no matter how ridiculous the story was. And she might actually believe him after all, he figured.  
  
It wouldn’t hurt to try.  
  
“Well, this morning when I was on my morning run, I saw this thing between two fishermen on the pier. I thought it was a huge fish but it was actually a mermaid! And the dudes were talking about taking it and selling it and cutting its vocal cords, and I couldn’t take hearing that, so I rescued it and shoved it into the water!”  
  
Then he ran as fast as he could back home, but she didn’t need to hear that.  
  
Maki gave him a look. “Where do you come up with things like this?”  
  
Yeah, he figured that she wouldn’t believe him. Still, he held his bandaged palms up to her, trying to convince her. “No way, it’s true! I cut myself on its scales and everything!”  
  
She rolled her eyes and pushed his hands away. “I hope you really didn’t shove some poor fisherman’s catch into the water this morning. You could at least make up a believable story if you’re going to lie.”  
  
Kaito didn’t answer that right away, staring at his hands. He knew what he saw, and that had been a mermaid. He’d heard him talk, too, even if he had no proof now. No proof except for the cuts on his hands, of course. Maki would never believe him though, just as he figured. So he dropped it with a shrug. It wasn’t worth the effort, he decided, and it was probably better that she didn’t believe in his story.  
  
“Right, sorry. I think it’s a pretty interesting story though,” he said. He couldn’t say he blamed her for not believing something like finding a mermaid, but damn he would’ve liked to be able to get his persistent thoughts out into the open with his best friend.  
  
“You’ve had better stories.” Maki turned her eyes back to the street ahead of them. They were nearing the orphanage she lived in now, and Kaito could see the reluctance building in her expression. “You better make your next story a good one, or else.”  
  
“Yeah. Yeah, gotcha… Did you want to come over to my place for a while?” he asked, ignoring her threat.  
  
Gratitude flashed across her eyes, but when she turned her face to look up at him it had already vanished. Even so, the tiniest smile remained on her lips. “Yes. That’d be nice, thank you.”  
  
They crossed the street together, and Kaito pushed his thoughts away to fill the silence between them with his voice again. He had a life to live, and couldn’t spend it with his head preoccupied with impossible regrets.

 

So he told himself, at least. A few days later he found himself worse off than ever. No matter what he did, he couldn’t put the memory of his encounter out from his mind. By the time the weekend rolled around, Kaito couldn’t resist anymore. He went down to the beach, to the pier where he’d first seen the merman. At the edge of the wood he paused, staring at the far end where he’d seen the captured merman.   
  
This was a stupid idea. It wasn’t like the creature would be lurking around the very spot that he’d been captured the first time, even if the pier was utterly devoid of people now. Yet Kaito still went around to go beneath the pier, walking down closer to the water until he stood with the waves lapping against his knees in the shadow of the dock above. He rested a hand against one of the thick support beams, scanning the blue ahead of him.   
  
He didn’t know what to expect, but a sudden large shadow appearing from around one of the beams wasn’t one of them.   
  
It moved swiftly, bending the water with its size and speed. Kaito stepped back, splashing as he attempted to retreat before the coming shape. Too slow. Before he’d made it back even a couple of feet, the shadow reached him.   
  
A hand broke the surface of the water. It caught his, and jerked downward.   
  
He shouted. The sound echoed off the underside of the pier and choked off with a splash as Kaito hit the water. He sat up, brushing wet hair from his eyes and sputtering in the shock of the freezing water. He blinked rapidly and swiped the back of his hands across his eyes, trying to get his bearings as his heart thudded frantically against the back of his ribcage. Then, the sight in front of him made it freeze in his chest.   
  
“ _ You _ !”   
  
Thin lips curled up in a playful grin, purple eyes sparkling with mischief. “You know, normally people think of something a little more eloquent to say than that when they see a super rare creature. And I do have a name you know.”   
  
Right in front of him was the very merman who’d been running through his head for the past few days. Kaito’s jaw dropped open and he could only gape in silent shock. The merman giggled, clearly amused by his reaction. The sound brought him back to his senses; he struggled to say anything more substantial.   
  
“You—. You’re that—.” His thoughts were like live wire, electric and jumping back and forth before he could get a handle on them. Finally he pounced on the only words he could grasp. “What the hell are you doing here?”   
  
“Huh? Whaddya mean?” The merman tilted his head to one side. Kaito saw that the water was shallow enough for him to prop himself up on his hands to raise his head above the surface. His tail was stretched out behind him, resting against the sand. “I sort of live here. The question is, what are you doing here?”   
  
“I was just… wait, you’re still here even after you got caught by those guys?”   
  
“Well duh, they can’t do anything to me. The only reason why they caught me that first time was because I made a teensy mistake. Won’t happen again. ‘sides, they don’t know that I make my home around here, so it’s all good. Unless someone tells on me, but you wouldn’t do that to poor widdle me, riiight?” he asked, once again flashing him those needle-sharp teeth. “Now answer  _ my _ question. What’re you doing here, knowing that there was an evil merman hanging out right here?”   
  
Evil? Kaito didn’t understand that descriptor. He shook his head, more to get the water out of his ears than in response to anything. “I was just curious. I… wanted to see you again, if I could.”   
  
The merman laughed at him, and his ears burned in embarrassment from his reaction. “That’s so  _ stupid _ . Didn’t you know? Merpeople are evil and ruthless. I could kill you with one hand tied behind my back.” He dragged himself along the bottom of the water, closer to him, and he rested a scaly cheek against one of Kaito’s raised knees. “But  _ actually _ , it’s a good thing you did come here. You wanna know why?”   
  
Kaito was too stunned to do more than ask, “Why?”   
  
The creature moved again, closer, slinking around Kaito’s knees. He curled his fingers into the front of Kaito’s shirt and hoisted himself up, directly into his lap. Kaito had no idea how to react. A merman sat right in his lap and smiling almost sweetly right up at him directly after laughing at him and threatening him. He opened his mouth, about to say something even if he didn’t know what the hell kind of words to even voice, but the merman cut him off by leaning his face in so close that Kaito could feel his breath on his face.   
  
“I wanted to thank you for saving my life. Even though I  _ totally  _ didn’t need the help, it’s still sweet in a stupid kind of way.”   
  
“I—that’s kind of a shitty way to say thanks,” he said finally, unsure whether to frown or to just continue staring. He should probably shove the merman off of him, but his hands stung with the reminder of the last time he put them on this guy.   
  
“Is it? Sorryyyy. Here, how ‘bout this?” He spoke with honey in his voice, and a playful lilt to his tone. Kaito didn’t know what to make of it, or of anything that was happening for that matter. “As thanks, I’ll give you a kiss. For my  _ knight _ in  _ shining _ armor, nee-heehee.”   
  
What?   
  
“What?” he echoed his thought out loud, stunned and bewildered. “…I mean.  _ What _ ?”   
  
The merman laughed again. He pulled his head back again, leaning back against Kaito’s raised knees. “Oh man, you should see your face right now! You’re too easy to mess with!”   
  
Kaito responded by dropping his legs. The merman let out a yelp, splashing back into the water. He pushed himself up quick enough though, and the amusement in his expression hadn’t faded a bit.   
  
“Wow you’re so mean,” he said, not looking put out at all. “But I’m really bored and you’re kinda fun! So how about this: let’s play together some more. I want to know all about the dumb heroic idiot who saved my life, and I’ll even let you look at my cute little self as well. It’s win-win for both of us.”   
  
“What? What makes you think that I’ll want to come back here, you little shit?” He couldn’t believe how obnoxious this merman was. Part of him regretted coming back here.   
  
“Because!” he chimed out, grinning wide. “What human doesn’t want the privilege of hanging out with something from one of his fantasies!”   
  
Alright, he had a point. Disregarding his wording, he did have a point.   
  
Though Kaito didn’t respond, his face must have said plenty, because the merman gave a satisfied nod. “Alright then, it’s settled! I can’t wait to mess with you lots more in the future! It’ll be sooo much fun. For me, of course.”   
  
Kaito had no idea what he was getting himself into. He cleared his throat, too baffled about this turn of events to make a good coherent response. “…sure. Ok then.”   
  
Evidently it was enough of an answer for the merman. The end of his fin splashed lightly in the water before him, similar to the way a puppy might wag his tail. It was almost adorable, how delighted he seemed just from Kaito’s agreement to meet up with him again in the future. Almost so, if scales and the lingering smell of fish could be considered cute in any way.   
  
“ _ Perfect _ ! Oh, and by the way, I’ll even tell you my name since I like you so much. It’s Kokichi. You should feel honored—you’re the only human I’ve ever told it too.”


	2. Someone Doesn't Understand the Magic of Mermaids

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kaito has his first (second.... well, third technically) meeting with Kokichi. Then its off to tennis club--for a little while anyway.

“Come meet me here tomorrow! Don’t keep me waiting or I’ll tell one of my many friends to kill you.”

“ _What_?!”

“Nee-heehee, just kidding! I don’t have any friends! Wow, you looked really freaked out for a second there. Did I _scare_ you?”

“Shut up, I wasn’t scared!”

Or maybe he had been, a little bit. Kaito didn’t know. Just the other day, he’d first seen a mermaid and pushed it into the water, and now he had plans to hang out with said mermaid. One which claimed to be a flesh-eating monster, for that mattered, and had (jokingly????) threatened to kill him if he didn’t show up in a timely matter. At the time, Kaito didn’t know how to react, except with his usual anger. He still didn’t really know how he should feel.

Either way, he guessed that he had a date with a merman.

“Ugh!” Grunting, Kaito smacked the side of his head. No, it wasn’t a date! Just a hang out. He didn’t even know anything about this thing, aside from his name. Kokichi. From their very first interaction, Kaito felt that dealing with Kokichi would be exhausting.

He was still going to show up though, of course. Not every highschooler got to hang out with a literal myth. Or legend, or whatever. Magical creature. Wait, was Kokichi magical? Other than the fact that he was a half-person half-fish thing, did that count as being magic? Were his parents some weird star-crossed dolphin/human couple that decided to—?

Eww, alright enough of that disgusting image his brain suggested to him. No thinking of dolphins and humans banging to make the hybrid-abomination that Kokichi might be. It wasn’t even biologically possible. Kaito might not focus on that subject, but he knew that much anyway.

“Hey, you doing ok?”

“Huh?” Kaito shook himself out of his reverie. One of his classmates was looking at him with an expression crossed between curiosity and concern. He forced out a grin, giving his classmate a thumbs up. “Yep! A-OK, don’t worry about me!”

That seemed to be sufficient, and Kaito was left to his own devices once again. He sighed, frustrated with how easily distracted he got nowadays, with his encounters with that merman weighing so heavily on his mind. Said merman would probably get a kick out of it if he told him about it, so Kaito decided not to mention it when they met again. Luckily Kaito was already ahead on the material, so he got away with daydreaming in class for a few days in a row. He’d just buckle down and study a little bit harder when he got home that night.

After his meeting with Kokichi.

School dragged on forever, and he almost shouted when the final bell finally rang. He gathered his stuff and stood, going to meet Maki at the front of the school. She arrived almost the same time as him, and nodded in acknowledgment of the greeting he gave her.

“You seem in a much better mood today,” she observed, blinking her red eyes up at him.

“Do I?” That surprised him. Had he been so obvious? He guessed that he must have, with how Maki noticed how strange he’d been just yesterday.

“Yeah. You didn’t keep me waiting today, too,” she said, then averted her gaze. She played with one of her long ponytails. “Not that I would’ve waited anyway so… it’s good that you didn’t.”

That made him grin. “Well, let’s get going, I’ve got a story for you today! It’s another one about that mermaid! Or I guess you’d call him a merman, but I don’t think it matters…”

She rolled her eyes. “Of course it is. Well, let’s hear it then.”

So Kaito told her about his meeting with Kokichi. About how he’d ambushed Kaito under the pier, dragged him down into the water. He may have embellished some details, maybe throwing in a wild struggle and near-drowning that ended in the promise of a life-long friendship and special magic trinket, but he didn’t see any harm in having some fun with the story. Maki didn’t believe it to begin with, so he focused on entertaining her with just a few nuggets of truth.

It worked too. He caught a smile on her face from the corner of his eyes, and it stayed as they said their goodbyes and parted ways. Pride burst in Kaito’s chest that he’d put it there. He knew that Maki was often miserable in the orphanage, and going to school was probably the closest thing that she had to an escape. It made him happy to know that he could brighten her day, even if it was just for a piece of it.

Once she disappeared from view, Kaito headed toward the beach, making for the pier. Despite how fed up he’d been while remembering his conversation with Kokichi from the previous day, he found himself excited to see the merman again. He wanted to know more about him. Where he came from, how he lived. And then, most importantly…

Why the hell Kokichi had tried to kiss him?

The thought hit him like a sudden punch to the gut. He’d totally forgotten how Kokichi had not only dragged him down into the water, but he’d sat himself right in Kaito’s lap and offered to kiss him as thanks for saving him, like it was straight out of some shitty romance novel. Embarrassment burned his face, and even the cold of the water as he waded out into the ocean didn’t do anything to douse it.

“Kaito! _Finally_ you came. Geez, I was waiting here aaaaall day. I thought you’d forgotten about me and you’d abandoned me to drift alone in the ocean for all my days?” And there was Kokichi, giving him a mournful look that was too exaggerated to be real.

Kaito shook his head. “Geez, I have school you know. I told you that already. It’s not that late anyway; it’s right around the time we agreed on.”

The despairing look vanished from Kokichi’s face. Instead he wore a bored expression, shrugging. “You can just skip school anyway. You don’t _need_ it. Look at me. I don’t go to school and I’m super smart! The smartest little mermaid that you’ll ever meet,” he said, then grinned. “It’s kinda hard to tell the time when oceans don’t have clocks. No watches either, see?”

Kokichi held out his bare wrist as if to prove that he didn’t have a watch. Not that Kaito needed to see it anyway; that was obvious. He rolled his eyes, moving on from that topic to bring up the more pressing one.

“Whatever. Anyway, I had a question I wanted to ask you. About the, you know, the kiss yesterday.”

“Ooo, did you want me to kiss you?” Kokichi’s eyes sparkled with mischief, a grin splitting his face. “I’m a _really_ great kisser, you know, you’d fall in love with me immediately.”

“What? No! Of course that’s not what I meant! What’s with you anyway? I just wanted to know why you offered to kiss me just for saving you the other day. It’s not that weird to wonder,” he ended up grumbling, rubbing the back of his head.

“Hmm?” Kokichi didn’t answer right away, tucking his hands behind his own head and floating, belly up in the water. The small movement of the water rocked him, but his tail that dragged along the sand kept him anchored in place. “Does it really matter?”

“Of course it does! You don’t just go trying to kiss people for no reason!”

“Oh don’t worry, I wasn’t _really_ gonna kiss you. You had bad breath,” Kokichi told him with a giggle.

Kaito resisted the urge to check. “It is not, fuck off!”

His reaction only made Kokichi laugh harder. He twisted in the water, propping himself up so that he could properly look up at Kaito. The amusement faded from his expression, replaced with one that Kaito couldn’t read. For a minute he remained quiet, staring at Kaito’s face. Searching for something? Kaito couldn’t tell.

After another minute passed, Kokichi evidently found whatever he was looking for because he shrugged and said, “I mean, I sort of _did_ have a reason y’know. But I changed my mind.”

Kaito frowned. “And what reason was that?” he asked, trying not to sound impatient.

Kokichi tilted his head back, looking up at the pier above them. “Well ya know, if a mermaid kisses a human, then that mermaid will become human. Which means the human will turn into a mermaid though, and they lose all of their memories as well! Kinda a shitty deal I guess, but if you hate your life I guess that it’s sort of a second chance, I dunno.”

“They—. What? Are you making stuff up?” That sounded like a tall tale that Kaito would tell Maki on their way home. He shook his head. If that was a motivation for trying to kiss him, then he didn’t want to discredit it. Just in case it came up again in the future. Not that Kaito would ever agree to kiss Kokichi. “And you changed your mind? Why?”

He shrugged. “I dunno, just didn’t feel like being a stinky human anyway. Sounds boring. Why? Did you want to test it out? You wanna be a mermaid too? I could kiss you right now if you want!”

“No I’m good,” Kaito said, a little too quickly.

Kokichi giggled at him. Even if it was at his expense, Kaito found the sound pleasing to his ears. That didn't stop him from scowling in response to it, however.

Well whatever. Even if it sounded like a lie, at least he had some sort of answer for how Kokichi acted the other day. And if it wasn’t the truth after all, one day he’d pull the actual reason from Kokichi’s needle-filled mouth. He felt like he should be a little afraid of Kokichi now, after hearing that. But Kokichi had changed his mind in the end, regardless of his motivation, so Kaito didn't see any reason to drop his shaky trust in him. For now.

He'd keep an eye on him in the future, in any case.

* * *

 

The next day he considered skipping the tennis club practice taking place, but he thought better of it. Spending all day zoned out in class and then shirking a chance for some good exercise was the very top of a long slippery slope down to the bottom of a pile of his shattered hopes and dreams. Even if the fall wouldn’t be so dramatic or so fast, Kaito didn’t see any reason to start now. While he didn’t care much for the sport itself, he enjoyed working out and talking to other people in the club.

Winning practice games felt pretty great as well, actually. It could be fun when he wasn’t totally outmatched by another member.

Which unfortunately, he seemed to be woefully outmatched at every turn today.

Kaito grunted as he lunged forward for the ball and swung. His racket connected with the ball, but sent it flying far over the net and past the lines at the end of the court. He groaned, dragging the back of his hand across his sweaty forehead. Damn that had been downright embarrassing. His opponent, the now-winner from his shameful whack of the ball straight out of bounds, gave him a smile that was in parts sympathetic and pleased with his own victory.

“Good game,” he told Kaito, approaching the net to offer him his hand.

Sighing at his own ineptitude, Kaito stepped forward as well to shake the outstretched hand. “Yeah, good game, man,” he said. “I really need to practice more, I guess.”

Not today, though. He decided that he’d done enough tennis for the day. A guy could only get pounded so many times before he had to throw in the towel. Next time he’d throw himself back into the club with a vengeance, and beat every person who’d won against him today for sure. For now, though, he was looking forward to just going home.

“Going home already?” Ryoma was standing by the pile that the rest of them had dumped their stuff into underneath a tree. He raised his eyebrows at Kaito as he approached, his water bottle held to his lips.

“Yeah, I’m playing really terrible anyway, so I guess I’ll just take off for the day,” Kaito said, looking for his own backpack. “You gonna go up against anyone or are you just going to hang out over here for the whole meeting.”

“I’ll go over in a bit.” Ryoma shrugged, but didn’t offer anything more on that subject.

Honestly, Kaito wouldn’t blame him if he decided to take off and let the tennis club run on his own. He was by far the best player out of all of them, and none of them even came close to beating him. It was less practice and more of Ryoma using them as a rag to polish his own skills. As a coach, he was invaluable. As a player, however, Kaito couldn’t see what he’d get out of coming to the meetings. Yet he was there every time, without fail or complaint.

Ryoma should be a pro player, not messing around with a bunch of highschool students using the club to get out of their houses for a little while longer.

“You know, I saw some of your matches today…” When Ryoma began speaking again, an immediate dread filled Kaito. He braced himself for a verbal lashing about his shitty skills.

“Yeah? What about them?” Kaito didn’t mean to get defensive, but his tone took on a sharp edge.

“You’re usually pretty good. Your matches are entertaining when you get someone at your same skill level. Today though you’ve seemed like you were distracted. Your reaction time is slower, your hits aren’t as accurate… I was wondering if there was anything going on that has you like this.”

Kaito hadn’t expected that. While he talked to Ryoma about as much as he did anyone else in the club, he hadn’t known that Ryoma noticed anything about his usual playing at all, let alone enough to see when he was off his game.

“Oh you know, the usual stuff. Stress, life, that sort of thing,” he said.

“That makes sense.” Ryoma nodded and didn’t press him to elaborate. “Highschool is a stressful time for a lot of people. It’s good to take time off when you need to relax.”

“Yeah…” And Kaito normally would’ve left it there. He’d given sufficient excuse, and he really did feel like just going home. He could wrap up some homework and then spend the rest of the day with whatever bullshit he felt like. But thinking more about it, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he should still around a little bit longer. “…hey, just curious. You used to be super into mermaids and shit, right?”

The most unnatural transition ever. Ryoma’s eyes flickered up to his face, giving him a look that told him that the awkward subject change didn’t go unnoticed. After a few moments, his gaze fell away again, and he shrugged. “I wouldn’t say that I was ‘into’ them. Interested in the different myths surrounding mermaids, maybe, but it’s not like I love them or anything.”

Yeah sure, and that interest had swayed him into making one of his class projects on that very subject. Kaito had heard him discussing it with someone else in the club once, as they’d wrapped up their meeting. At the time he’d internally scoffed, thinking about how mermaids were way too girly for a dude to be into. Now he wondered if he might be able to learn something from Ryoma after all, now that Kaito had met an actual mermaid himself.

“Why? What about mermaids interests you?” he asked, trying to make it seem less like he was fishing for information and more like he was genuinely interested in what Ryoma had to say.

He didn’t answer right away, however. For a while he only stared down at his water bottle, as if the words would come to him from out of it. Yet nothing came forth, and Kaito wondered if Ryoma would outright refuse to answer him. What gives? It wasn’t like he was asking for some tragic backstory, just a simple question on why Ryoma liked the things that he did.

Just as the silence started getting uncomfortable, he said, “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

All that waiting for such an unsatisfying answer. Kaito frowned. “Hey, you don’t know that! Maybe I will believe you!”

“Maybe. Probably not. It’s nothing to worry about anyway. I just felt like looking up some things about mermaids and didn’t find what I was looking for, so that’s all there is to it.”

The way Ryoma talked, it sounded like he had a personal run-in with one. Yet as he spoke of it, a tightness appeared at the corners of his mouth, and a dark shadow fell over his face. He decided that it was better to not push the subject right now. He switched gears instead.

“I heard that there’s some stories where they used to be humans, you know,” Kaito said, shoving his hands into his pockets in an attempt to sound casual. “And that they can kiss someone to turn them into a mermaid as well. Sounds crazy, huh?”

Ryoma’s gaze shifted back up to Kaito’s face. Something hard had appeared in his eyes, and despite the dramatic height difference between them, Kaito couldn’t help but feel a little intimidated by the look. “You heard that, huh?”

“Yeah.” He dug the toe of his shoe into the dirt, trying to brush off the suspicion. It wasn’t like he’d asked anything wrong. He just wanted to know a little more about the creature he planned to meet repeatedly in the future. “You know anything about that sort of thing?”

“A little. It’s not a common story, actually.” Ryoma’s gaze didn’t falter; they remained trained on Kaito. “So it’s weird that you’d just happen to hear about it.”

“Geez, what’s up with that cold look? My grandma told me a story about it, so I just wanted to ask you because you’re the mermaid guy. Sheesh.” Kaito couldn’t believe how steady his voice was as he lied through his teeth. He wouldn’t be surprised if Ryoma could see his nose growing after that tale, no matter how much sense it made to him.

Ryoma sighed. Kaito wasn’t sure, but he seemed a little disappointed at the response. “You’re right, I guess I was just a little curious.”

That wasn’t the word that Kaito would use to describe the look Ryoma just gave him, but he decided to let it slide. Ryoma seemed like he was willing to talk about some of the stuff he’d learned, and Kaito wanted to hear what he had to say.

“Yes, you’re right. There are… some stories which talk about mermaids being a sort of cycle. No one knows how the first ones came to be, but theoretically either their numbers would be the same, or they’d be dwindling from being hunted. Not that anyone has ever provided proof of catching a mermaid, so we don’t know. But there’s talk about them getting sold in black markets. Catching one would bring you quite a bit of money, if you wanted to go that route.” Ryoma eyed him, and then continued. “Yes, though. In those stories, a mermaid could kiss a human in order to trade places with them. They’d gain back their humanity that they lost and can’t remember, and then the human takes their place as a mermaid at the cost of all of their memories.”

“All of them?”

Ryoma paused to think before he answered. “Maybe not all of them. No one has exactly talked to a mermaid in these stories to check and see if they retain anything, but it doesn’t matter.” A bitterness crept into his expression. “They lose all the important ones, anyway.”

Kaito thought about what Ryoma had said. After that reaction, he was sure that Ryoma had met an actual mermaid himself. He briefly wondered if it’d been Kokichi, but then he discarded the thought. Kokichi had told him that he’d never actually spoken to a human before. Although if he did, he could understand Ryoma’s bitterness. That merman was a real piece of work. Kaito might end up embittered as well by the end of his acquaintance with him.

“That’s pretty sad. What if they just wanna kiss someone? What if they kiss another mermaid? Would they both lose their memories, or would it just cancel out?” he asked.

“That wouldn’t happen,” Ryoma answered immediately, and with such certainty that it caught Kaito off-guard.

“Huh? Why not?” he asked.

“Because mermaids only exist to use humans to become human again themselves. They’re liars and they’re manipulative and, most of all, they are incapable of feeling love. At all.”

Ryoma seemed so sure of that, and said it with so much loathing in his voice, Kaito found it difficult to question him on it. He found it hard to believe. After all, if what Ryoma said was true, then why didn’t Kokichi kiss him that first time? He’d been right there, sitting in his lap. If he really wanted to, then Kokichi could’ve just leaned forward and gotten him before Kaito even knew what was happening.

Whether they truly couldn’t feel love or not, he couldn’t believe that mermaids were all manipulative monsters just from that alone.

However he couldn’t exactly say so without telling Ryoma that he personally met with a mermaid. Considering the way Ryoma looked when he spoke of them, he thought that’d be a bad idea, and so instead he nodded and accepted his words for what they were. “Right. Thanks for telling me about this. I guess it’s kinda embarrassing to be interested in this kind of stuff.”

Ryoma shrugged. “It’s fine. I haven’t gotten to talk about this in a while, so it’s not a problem. I don’t want to forget. Anyway, you’re leaving then, right? Take care, don’t do anything reckless.”

For some reason, that made Kaito laugh. “Who, me? Geez, you sound like my grandma, talking like that.”

“Heh, well you never know if your parting words with someone will be your last, I guess.”

“Hey man, lighten up, I’ll see you next club meeting. See ya.” Kaito brushed off Ryoma’s words as he headed out, but the foreboding smear they left remained in his heart for a long time after.

As unlikely as it was that he’d met yet another person who met a mermaid, Kaito had a feeling that Ryoma’s words didn’t come solely from his research. Maybe sometime he’d find out a way to question him more. It wouldn’t be easy to do without revealing his own association with Kokichi—something which might be a bad idea considering Ryoma’s apparently strong opinion on mermaids—but he could figure something out. He was Kaito fucking Momota, after all. He could do anything he set his mind to.

But for now, he had to go home, get some rest, and catch up on some good hard studying. He was a highschool student before anything else, with dreams to go to space. Kaito couldn’t slack off for a single second. So he set aside his conversation with Ryoma and the badgering thoughts filled with mermaids, and tried instead to remember the formulas they’d learned for the current section of their textbook.


	3. Realization

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kaito falls into a routine, and hanging out with a mermaid almost feels normal at this point.

His meetings with Kokichi fell into part of his daily routine.

Kaito liked his routines. They made things easy, and the novelty of meeting with a creature straight out of myth wore off quicker than he expected. He’d go on his morning run on the new route, still avoiding the fishermen that he screwed over on the day he met Kokichi, spend time with his grandmother, and then headed off to school. After that he either went to tennis club—twice a week, as usual—or he walked home with Maki. Then, of course, he headed down to the beach to the special rock Kokichi found for them to meet up with the mischievous merman. After a few weeks of that, he took up his old route down the coast, and he never saw those fishermen again to his relief. Life went back to normal.

Meeting a mermaid was normal now, a notion that made him shake his head in disbelief. It sounded like something straight out of a storybook, but at least he managed to focus in class a little better, and his work didn’t suffer as he thought of Kokichi less and less. Not that he ever forgot him completely, but Kaito had a life to live and goals to achieve. He couldn’t be thinking of Kokichi all the time as those things slipped out of his reach. He was just a (talented, handsome, destined for greatness) average high school student working towards becoming an astronaut who happened to have a mermaid friend.

If he could call Kokichi a friend, anyway.

A week after the strange conversation he’d had with Ryoma, the tennis captain approached him again, hands shoved into his pockets and his beanie pulled low over his head. Kaito was in the middle of tying his shoe, and raised his eyes at his approach.

“Hey,” came the simple greeting.

Kaito nodded in acknowledgement. “Hey.”

“So, I was thinking about the talk we had together the other day, and I just want to apologize if I came off as rude or anything. It’s just something that I get heated about. One of those things.” Ryoma laid a hand on the top of his beanie, adjusting how it sat. “Still, I didn’t mean to be rude.”

“Don’t worry about it. I was just surprised about how passionate you got about it, man,” Kaito said. After all, he’d only seen Ryoma so fervent about tennis before, and hadn’t expected that much negativity concerning mermaids of all things.

Ryoma nodded. “It’s something I’ve looked into a lot. That’s all. But if you have any questions, you can still ask me. I’ll do my best to answer them, so you don’t have to go looking at any inaccurate sources.”

“Thanks man. I think I’m going to stick to space shit right now.”

Kaito wondered how sources about a creature that didn’t exist could be inaccurate, except perhaps when referring to specific cultures. He knew now that they were real, of course, but he didn’t see how Ryoma could know that in order to call such things ‘inaccurate’. Unless he had some experience. But he didn’t want to bring the question up and rile Ryoma up all over again, so he kept quiet and grinned. Perhaps if he desperately needed information he’d come to him, but he decided for now to learn as he went with Kokichi. That seemed to be his best bet.

“Right, you want to be an astronaut, right?” Ryoma’s eyes held a glimmer of interest.

He finished tying off his shoe and stood, back straight and chest pushed out in pride. “Wrong. I am going to be an astronaut. I’m studying like hell and when I take that exam I’m going to fucking ace it! I’ll be the youngest ever astronaut, you’ll see!”

The corner of Ryoma’s mouth twitched. “Youngest? But I thought there was already the youngest, someone who got their college degree in only two years and passed the exam the first time. And you need the degree to take it in the first place.”

Kaito didn’t let his shoulders deflate at the reminder. “Well, maybe I’ll bend the rules a bit. If I can ace the exam I should be able to take it anytime!”

“I suppose, but rules are rules.”

“Screw the rules!” Kaito balled his hands into fists. “This is my dream! I’m going to make it a reality as soon as possible, no matter what anyone says!”

Ryoma chuckled, a low sound that came more from his chest than his throat. He returned his hands to his pockets, grinning up at him. “Good luck. Just don’t get yourself banned or anything trying it, ok? Now, are you going to join practice with us?”

“I won’t, and you bet I am!”

Kaito threw himself into tennis practice with more energy than normal, fueled by his determination for his future.

A Sunday a few weeks after that found him strolling the busy street leading up to the beach. The warm smell of cinnamon and savory foods filled the air, making his stomach rumble despite the lunch he’d eaten just a couple hours before. He didn’t make it a habit of snacking, especially not the sort of junk found at the carts lined along the street for tourists. Yet the sight of a warm, icing-covered pastry sitting in the heated display case of one vendor gave him pause. While he didn’t like sugary things and the street vendors tended to greatly inflate the price of such pastries, his thoughts immediately turned to Kokichi. When was the last time the merman had something sweet?

Kaito realized he didn’t know what Kokichi ate. The topic never came up between them. Was it fish? Kelp? The mere idea of eating either of those things raw made Kaito’s face scrunch up in disgust. Even worse, what if Kokichi had to make do with the scraps just carelessly tossed into the ocean, essentially making someone’s trash part of his diet? Judging by the sharp teeth that filled his mouth, Kaito assumed he had to eat mainly meat. Even so, he’d been human once, so he probably had a sweet tooth as well. Right?

Either way, Kaito bought a cinnamon roll from the vendor. Kokichi might eat it, or he wouldn’t, it didn’t matter. He had enough money on him that he decided it was worth the risk of investment to give Kokichi a nice little treat that he wouldn’t be able to have since turning into a mermaid. Once which Kokichi wouldn’t remember having, too. So he got the pastry, carefully wrapped it up in napkins, and placed it in his bag.

He couldn’t wait to surprise Kokichi with it.

Kaito made his way down to the shore, and travelled alongside it until he came to the secluded area that they met up in. He waded out into the water, their ‘meeting rock’ in his sights, where Kokichi had room to swim around it and Kaito could sit on its surface. Before he made it though, a splash off to his side announced Kokichi’s arrival.

“You’re back again. Wow.” There was a teasing note of faux-surprise in Kokichi’s voice, even after they’d met so many times already. “Gee, you keep coming back to me, it’s almost like you like-like me or something.”

He rolled his eyes hard, and continued towards the rock. “Yeah sure, whatever. And if I didn’t come out here again then you’d probably whine about me abandoning you or some shit.”

“I would not! I don’t care if you never ever come—.” Kokichi abruptly fell silent. When Kaito glanced over at him, he saw that he’d tilted his head back, nostrils flaring as he sniffed at the air. “What’s that smell? It smells… I dunno, it’s weird? Sweet?”

He hadn’t expected Kokichi to smell the pastry in his bag, and he wondered if mermaids had some supernatural olfactory sense, or if the cinnamon and sugar made that striking a difference from the briny scent of the ocean that Kokichi couldn’t help but notice it. Whatever the answer, Kaito didn’t respond right away except for a shrug and a dismissive, “If you shut up for a couple seconds and let me get settled, I’ll show you.”

Kokichi swam around him, nearly tripped up Kaito as he darted across his path. The water churned where he went, forcing Kaito to stop as it upset his balance. He gritted his teeth, annoyed. Thankfully he didn’t fall into the water and completely ruin the gift.  
  
“Come on, hurry up then! Don’t stop now, geez!” Kokichi huffed, giving him a childish glare from where he floated beside him. As if it wasn’t his fault that Kaito had stopped in the first place.

“You’ll never find out what it is if you keep acting like this,” Kaito grumbled, but he trudged forward once he’d regained his balance anyway. Reaching the rock was a relief, no thanks to Kokichi constantly getting underfoot.

The moment he sat down on the rock, Kokichi clambered up over the lip. Kato jerked his bag away as water cascaded down his body onto the rock, soaking through his shorts. He grimaced, but he hadn’t expected any less. Whenever he came out to visit Kokichi, he never thought that he’d return home dry.

Kokichi held a grasping hand out to him, his belly balanced on the rock, webbed claws opening and closing expectantly. “Ok! You’re sitting, now show me! Come on, come on, give it to me!” he exclaimed, eyes gleaming like a child on Christmas day.

“So much for the smell being ‘weird’, huh?” Kaito remarked, but he grinned as he flipped open his bag, producing the neatly wrapped pastry from within. He peeled back the napkins, sticky with icing, so that Kokichi could see what he had.

Then something strange happened.

The excitement vanished from his face, expression wiped clean as Kokichi stared blankly over at it. His body stilled, although his arm remained outstretched. He looked as if he was frozen in time, silent and watching the pastry. Kaito wanted to ask Kokichi what happened, but he found himself affected by the abrupt shift in mood. His words lodged in this throat, thick and heavy. He couldn’t do much more than swallow against the lump they formed in his throat, just as paralyzed as Kokichi in his deep confusion.

Then Kokichi blinked, first the clear membrane over his eyes then his eyelids, and the spell between them broke. He tilted his head to the side with an innocent look, as if he hadn’t just reacted in such an alarming way to seeing the pastry. Kaito shuddered.

“You brought a cinnamon roll?”

“Yeah…” Kaito cleared his throat. “Kokichi, what the hell was that about?”

Another blink, genuine confusion. “Uhh, what was what about?”

Kokichi had to be lying, and Kaito’s brows slammed together in a glare. “What do you mean? You just fucking feaked out on me when I showed this thing to you!”

“Oh.” Kokichi’s gaze drifted away from him and he shrugged. When he spoke, he sounded distant. “I dunno, I was just… I don’t know, I feel like I was remembering something?”

“What did you remember?”

“Don’t know! I feel like something about eating warm cinnamon rolls with someone… Anyway!” Kokichi shrugged again. He seemed a little more lucid after that, grinning widely up at Kaito. “So it’s for me, right! Gimme it!”

Kokichi lunged forward, making a grab for the pastry. Kaito jerked his hand out of reach as he leaned forward, earning an indignant cry from the merman as his hand closed over empty air and he had to catch himself before he toppled across Kaito’s lap. The resulting pout made Kaito chuckle. After the alarming mood Kokichi just fell into, he couldn’t help but want to break the tension a little. Also the idea of teasing Kokichi, after all the times the merman mercilessly teased Kaito, appealed to him.

“Nope, it’s mine actually,” he said, bringing it up to his face. He made a show of smelling it, inhaling deeply through his nose, and then sighed contentedly. “Thought I’d bring a little snack with me while we hang out, you know?”

“Wow, you’re terrible! You’re more evil than me, and I’m the evil mermaid here!” Kokichi whined, dramatic tears springing to his eyes. “How could you be so cruuuuel! Maybe you’d be the better mermaid here instead of me. You’d fit right in!”

Then he dragged himself further up onto the rock, his fins dragging in the water as he balanced himself with both hands. Suddenly he leaned forward, and for one heart-stopping second Kaito thought that he intended to kiss him. He froze in surprise.

But Kokichi leaned right past his face and sunk his teeth into the cinnamon roll.

“Hey! You little shit!” Kaito yanked his hand back too late. Kokichi had his jaws clamped onto the cinnamon roll, and it remained trapped between his teeth when the support of Kaito’s hand vanished. “I’m going to punch you, I swear!”

Kokichi giggled, muffled into the pastry, and slipped backwards into the water with a soft splace. He floated on his back, anchored in place with his tail as he used his hands to pry the cinnamon roll from his mouth. “You snooze, you lose, Kaito! Not my fault you sat there like an idiot. You could’ve held it over your head or something and I never would’ve been able to take it from you, but you didn’t do anything! Geez!”

“Shut up, I’m not an idiot,” he grumbled. He didn’t know how to explain that he’d not only thought that Kokichi had been about to kiss him, but that he hadn’t reacted at all to something he knew would dramatically change up both of their lives. Kokichi would just torment him even more if he said something like that.

He needed to be more careful. At this rate, Kokichi would go in for a playful feint, expecting Kaito to have enough self-preservation to actually move. Then it’d surprise both of them when his lips actually planted on Kaito’s.

Or he was thinking about it too much. Why would Kokichi even pretend to kiss him at that point? Why was he thinking so much about Kokichi kissing him? It was just that the danger of sharing a kiss with Kokichi had him fixated on it for some reason.

Kokichi snickered at him. “Fine. How about dumbass? Stupid-face? Are either of those better?”

“You’re an asshole.”

“Yep! Sure am!” Kokichi grinned at him from the water and took a huge bite out of the cinnamon roll. He dragged his tongue over the pastry, leaving a trail of saliva over the icing, before he held it out to Kaito. “Here, I’m bored of this, so you can have it back now if you really want it.”

Kaito grimaced. “No, I don’t. Gross. It was for you anyway, but you had to go and be a little shit about it so I couldn’t even give it to you.”

Even if it had been his own snack, he certainly didn’t want to touch it now.

Kokichi made eyes at him, playfully batting his wet eyelashes at him. “Aww, I knew that Kaito loved me enough to bring me treats.”

“Shut up, I’m never doing anything for you again.”

The only answer Kokichi had for that was a giggle, before he busied himself with the pastry. Kaito let him, his thoughts wandering off as he watched Kokichi eat the food he just claimed to have bored him. He looked happy, lips stretched into a pleased grin with each messy bite he took, the tips of his fingers sunk in. Kaito’s chest swelled with pride to know that he’d brought that happiness to Kokichi through that one simple action and a little of his pocket money.

“Hey, question,” Kaito said, breaking the peaceful silence that had settled between them.

Kokichi blinked at him. “Answer,” he said, mimicking Kaito’s voice.

He ignored the mocking tone. “You know how you licked the pastry and shit, and got your saliva all over it?”

“Uh… yeah? What kind of question is that?” Kokichi stared at him like Kaito had been the one to lick the cinnamon roll before trying to feed it to him.

“That wasn’t the—ugh, just shut up.” He shok his head. “I was just wondering, since you tried to give the cinnamon roll back to me after you did that. Would I turn into a mermaid if I ate something with your spit on it?”

Disgust twisted Kokichi’s face. “Ew??? Why’re you thinking about that? No way, that’s not how it works. It’s magic, Kaito, not some gross kinky thing that you’re into.”

“Hey! I was just asking!” he snapped, face burning. “You’re the one offering your spitty food to me!”

“Yeah, I was lying! I wasn’t going to actually give it back to you. What kind of weirdo does that? I licked it, obviously it’s mine!”

Kaito stood from the rock, stomping his foot down into the water with a splash. He was ready to smack Kokichi over the head for the snide comments he kept making. Here he was trying to be purely scientific about things and Kokichi had to make him out to be a disgusting freak. “Hey, listen here you…”

“Yeah? I’m listening. What else are you gonna tell me? Are you gonna confess that you have a thing for mermaids? Like a weird fetish thing. Are you gonna try and screw me or something, because it’s gross to think of other people like that and for your information I don’t have—Ah!”

The second Kaito made a threatening step forward, Kokichi’s rant ended. Careful to hold the cinnamon roll above water, Kokichi kicked his tail to launch himself away, putting quick distance between the two of them with one powerful flip of his fins. Kaito would have no chance of catching him in the water, that was clear. Yet he still charged forward, not caring, knees high as he stomped through the water in pursuit.

Kokichi shrieked as he gave chase, but it mingled with high-pitched giggles as he continued to lazily beat his tail in the water. Kaito struggled through the water, gaining little on the merman. What ground he managed to make was only because Kokichi stopped to let him catch up a little, making the chase horribly one-sided. Kaito tripped and fell in the water at one point, ruining any hopes he’d had at keeping his clothes semi-dry throughout their time together. Kokichi laughed mercilessly, swimming circles around him as he stuffed the rest of the pastry into his mouth. Once he strayed just close enough, Kaito made a lunge for him, and Kokichi shrieked and choked a little when he successfully pounced right on top of him.

“No! Let me go!” Kokichi wriggled in his grip, but there was little he could do when Kaito stood, lifting him up out of the water.

“No way, I caught you and you deserve this, you little shit.”

“Heeeeeeelp!!! I’m getting murdered by an evil human!”

Kaito ignored his shouting, wading his way back to their rock with a squirming merman in his grip. He didn’t have any plans for revenge on Kokichi now that he’d caught him, but Kokichi wasn’t trying too hard to get away. With his tail, he could probably bat at Kaito and twist right out of his grip. The water would sting a little if he flopped straight into it, but it wouldn’t have been the first time Kokichi hit the water like that. He figured that Kokichi didn’t mind him holding him like this, despite complaining so loudly about it. The squirming stopped almost entirely once Kaito sat on the rocky outcropping, securing Kokichi in his lap.

Kokichi pouted up at him, but at least he’d stopped trying to get away. Now Kaito had a chance to get a good look at him, with the icing smeared all over his mouth, and a spot on his chest where he’d set the cinnamon roll down. His fingers weren’t much better, sticky with the icing. Kaito raised an eyebrow.

“Wow, you sure made a mess.”

Kokichi huffed and looked away. “Well excuse me for not having dainty eating habits. I kinda live in the ocean. Eat on the go, all that stuff. And there’s not exactly napkins in the water,” he said, pouting and refusing to look at him.

“Well I had napkins, so maybe if you weren’t such an asshole you could’ve used them while you ate,” Kaito told him. It’d been his fault for stealing the pastry anyway. Maybe next time he would have a bit more self control when he decided to snatch something from him.

But Kokichi looked back at him unapologetically, frowning and snuffing out Kaito’s hopes that Kokichi would ever not act like a little shit.

“Whatever, I don’t care. You’re the only one who cares about me making a mess.” Kokichi wiggled in his lap until he could sit up properly, his tail hanging over his legs. “Anyway, you told me it was for you, so I obviously had to take matters into my own hands.”

“I was just messing around with you! And if it was mine, you shouldn’t have taken it anyway. I bought it with my own money, you know!”

“Yeah, so? You could’ve just bought another one for yourself. You get to live on the surface, ‘you know’. You can have aaaaall the sweets in th world.” Although Kokichi still wore his usual shit-eating grin, a hint of bitterness had surfaced behind his gleaming eyes. “So I don’t feel bad about taking it. Whatever.”

Then he shrugged, his body language announcing the end of the conversation to Kaito. And yet Kaito didn’t want to drop it yet, frowning. He felt a little bad now for his teasing, although he felt like it was deserved with how relentlessly Kokichi teased him over everything.

“Well maybe I’ll bring more stuff like that sometimes when I come out here to meet you,” Kaito said, in part to alleviate his own guilt. Being a mermaid, unable to eat the sugary things he could so easily get on his own, being alone all the time, it all sounded miserable.

“Whatever, do what you want, I don’t care,” he said, tucking his hands behind his head and reclining in Kaito’s lap. Although he affected an indifferent air, Kaito saw a flicker of excitement in those eyes.

That settled it, then. He rarely dropped money on things like sweets because he didn’t care for putting such trash in his body, which would only get in the way of his ultimate life goal. But if it made Kokichi a little bit happier in the body he was in, then he wouldn’t mind occasionally bringing some over. He never would’ve guessed that a mermaid would have such a sweet tooth.

“What do you normally eat anyway?” he asked.

“Oh you know, just whatever’s edible in the great blue sea. A lot of fish guts, actually.” Kokichi said the last bit with a wicked grin, relishing in Kaito’s grimace.

Kaito scrunched up his face. “That’s gross, man.”

“Hey, that’s just how things are! I’m not lying this time, what else am I supposed to eat?”

“I dunno, but do you gotta describe it that way? What happened to you saying ‘ew’ when I asked a legit question about your saliva when you eat fish guts? That’s way grosser.”

“Nuh-uh. It’s not because that’s just what I have to eat. Your thing isn’t normal life at all, it’s just you having weird freaking kinks.”

Kaito decided then that it was a good time for Kokichi to clean the icing off of himself. He shoved the merman out of his lap. Kokichi screeched as he splashed down into the water, the resulting wave hitting Kaito’s knees as he laughed at the other’s distress.

“Kaito!”

Kokichi got his revenge in the form of a hefty scoop of water, flinging it over Kaito’s head. He sputtered, wiping salt water out of his eyes.

“Hey, I’m just trying to make you get clean, you ungrateful little shit.”

He stayed at the rock until his clothes began to dry off, by which time the stars began to appear in the fading light of the sky. Kokichi returned to his lap at that point, and was quiet as Kaito traced constellations for him and told him all that he could think of for each one—the stars that comprised them, the stories that some had, anything really. Kokichi let him talk, awe in his eyes as he gazed upward with him.

“You sure know a lot about space,” Kokichi murmured when Kaito had to pause to catch his breath.

Kaito continued to stare up at the sky. The sight of the stars above filled his chest with a dazzling feeling, as if they lit stars of his own within his heart. Something inside him itched, a feeling which he couldn’t shake. “Yeah. I’m gonna be an astronaut and be up there someday. I gotta know a lot about space. No matter what, I know I’ll get there.”

“…yeah.”

Kokichi shifted closer, curling up against his chest. One of his hands gripped Kaito’s shirt loosely, right over his heart, and Kaito had the absurd desire to cover it with his own hand. He seemed so small for the moment, so vulnerable. Kaito rested a hand on top of his head. They sat together in the wake of Kokichi’s quiet word, only the waves breaking the silence between them. Kaito stayed longer than usual, unwilling to leave just yet. Kokichi didn’t mention it. Maybe he even appreciated Kaito’s continued company.

In that silence, Kaito realized that his dream would lead him far inland, away from the coast. And for the first time he realized that, sooner or later, he’d leave Kokichi to be all alone once again.


End file.
